Peter had served in the British Army in the Second World War and had returned to Manchester to go back to his job as a tram conductor.

"As soon as they all get off, another lot all get on, and so you never finish and it was a nightmare," says Peter.

Post-war Manchester was a depressing place with rationing and a constant drizzle that Peter says just never let up.

One day he saw an ad in a newspaper looking for volunteers to join the Australian Army and spurred on with visions of sunny Australian beaches, Peter signed up and caught a boat to Australia.

British soldiers, already trained from the Second World War, were sort after by the Australian Army because they didn't need training and could be deployed straight away.

Before Peter had a chance to get a tan on Bondi Beach, he was shipped off to Korea as part of the Australian Army infantry.

"It was beautiful [Korea], but I came across this terrible smell. And then I came across the first body and then another body and they were all rotting in the ground," says Peter.

The ground was black after being burned in the previous battle, and the dead Chinese soldiers had been left on the battle field as some of the dead were holding grenades and it was considered too dangerous to try to bury them.

Told to dig a trench at the top of a hill, Peter stopped for lunch and sat down on what he thought as a clump of burnt grass.

"I'm looking and I can see a branch in front of me, a bent burnt branch and I suddenly noticed that one end had finger nails on it.

"Then I looked down and I was sitting on a head."

Peter recalls the feelings of terror and boredom, which make up the life of an infantryman.

"War for an infantry soldier is 90 per cent bored stiff, 10 per cent scared stiff.

"Every soldier. Every one is in a state of terror. A lot of people don't know that. Of course you are, you're in a state of terror.

"There are no cowards in the line and there are no brave soldiers. There are just those who have the ability, and most of them have, to be able to control that fear and hide it."

It's your mates that make you keep going, says Peter. Soldiers fight for their own survival and for the survival of their mates.

Peter went to Korea with a few mates he'd met in his brief time in Australia. They used to meet up at an old fig tree in the Sydney Botanic Gardens. Only Peter made it back.

Years later he was doing a photo shoot for the Gardening Australia magazine. The photographer picked a spot for the shoot, right under an old fig tree in the Sydney Botanic Gardens.

Peter sat under the tree and was thinking about how the view had changed over the years.

"Suddenly every body was looking at me in a strange way...I didn't know I'd been balling my eyes out.

"That's the effect of war, the delayed effect of war. It's quite awful."

This interview with Peter Cundall featured in an Anzac Day special with Michael Vietch.